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4->6 June 2004 - winter
Brisbane/Clayfield -> Bellthorpe -> Neurum ->
Dayboro
Well, there wasn't a LOT to report from our Mt Mee/Ocean View
home this weekend - perhaps the few sightings will go into my next
note from there - but I did have an exciting time travelling to and
from the mountain this past week.
For the
first time ever I saw, here in Clayfield (Brisbane inner-northern
suburb), a single Pale-headed Rosella. These lovely parrots are
our familiars on the mountain, but somehow, because of their natural
shy-wildness (compared to the Rainbow Lorikeets that do visit),
I had not expected to see them so close to the office among all these
blocks of flats and dense housing (by Q standards)! Here the
Torresian Crows are the main fascination, and the varying voices
of the Figbirds are the predominant chatter. Nevertheless,
occasionally, rounding the corner of the building as I did the other
day, there will be a White Ibis stalking hurriedly away across
the little patch of lawn.
So,
anyway, I headed off up to Bellthorpe (2,000 feet, near Maleny) - what
a beautiful spot this is - for Ian Gynther's MOST EXCELLENT
workshop on the Coxen's Fig-parrot. I feel that I have at least some
idea now about how to look for them...
Then,
on the way back, down on the lowlands (around Neurum), came the
highlight of the week. Whizzing along the road, I passed yet another
ordinary small dam in a cattle paddock, very near the house and the
family there droning around on a 'leisure vehicle' - and suddenly had
to screech to a halt and back up: that ordinary dam was covered with
birds!
In a
cruel late-afternoon wind and hunched down into a folding chair, this
is what I saw - in the order that I identified them on (or beside) the
dam, were:- Wandering Whistling Duck x ?80, Pacific Black
Duck, Australasian Shoveller (a pair among the PBalck Ducks, the
male in breeding plumage), Purple Swamphen, Dusky Moorhen, Eurasian
Coot, Cattle Egret (among the cattle), Little Pied
Cormorant (one, perched in the tree above), Jacana x3
(lily-trotting), Australasian Grebe (one seen, in breeding
plumage), Masked Lapwing x2 (screaming, as usual),
Scaly-breasted Lorikeets, Willie Wagtail, Magpie-lark, Maned/Wood
Duck, Plumed Whistling Duck x ?20.
What a
treat those Whistling Ducks were! - and each group (I later discovered
in reading) behaving exactly as supposed.
Then,
as I sat there with the binoculars glued on, a strange two- or
three-note wailing that I felt I'd never heard before made my head
snap around-- Only soon enough to see with the naked eye: two
cockatoos about the size of corellas or slightly larger passing low
overhead, whitish, with their underside thoroughly splotched pink. No
time for the binoculars before they disappeared behind some nearby
trees. What these were I do not know.
...
Next
day, at the southern foot of the range near Dayboro, over a farm
paddock near a house, there seemed to be a small kite hovering.
Closer-to, though, this proved amazingly to be a Black-faced
Cuckoo-shrike - in perfect hover (and
hover-swoop-hover)!
...
That
night I finished reading 'Redtails in Love, A wildlife drama in
Central Park' (New York), which conveys something of the thrill of
seeing truly wild creatures in the urban environment; and so has
reminded me of the Kedron Brook Wetlands here, which, though terribly
'exposed' and immediately bordered by several freeways/motorways
and right beside the airport, yet is home to many wild creatures,
including the Grass Owl... In odd complement to this book was reading
Joseph Banks' Endeavour Journal - a naturally rather sketchy
view of the very edges of wilderness.
So...now, I'm off this afternoon to see the Little Corellas -
which Roy Sonnenburg reported just down the road in Shaw Park
'systematically digging up the hockey fields for some sort of grass
root' - and his Long-billeds, Sulphur-crested Cockies, Galahs, and
'the local Galella', if they are still there. Thanks, Roy. I was there
one night this week, and a night the previous week, but did not have
the luck to see the ?White-throated Nightjar (was it?) hawking in the
lights.
Meanwhile, as I type this, two of the Torresian Crows have
arrived at their favourite spot for dunking bread - the neighbouring
gutter directly outside my window, which at its corner always seems to
hold water - just right for drinking or dunking, and a little caching
can be done a bit further along in dry weather. Great!
--
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Judith
Lukin-Amundsen
S-E Qld
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